The DCI David Fyfe Mysteries

by William Paul

  Billy Jones stopped the van the length of the street behind Byrne’s car and shook his brother Sandy awake.

  ‘He’s getting out,’ Billy shouted. ‘Get after him.’

  Sandy was slow to grasp what was happening when he woke up. His neck was stiff and there was no feeling in the arm he had squashed beneath him in the passenger seat. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked stupidly.

  Billy leaned across and opened the van door. ‘Adamson is doing a runner. Get on his tail.’

  Sandy looked ahead and summed up the situation. He saw Adamson beginning to move away from the car and a belch of black smoke from its exhaust as it pulled back into the traffic. He sighed.

  ‘It’s fucking cold out there.’

  ‘You stick with Adamson. One of us needs to be on foot. I’ll stay with the van.’

  ‘But it’s cold.’

  ‘Get out, you useless jessie. We’ll snatch him at the first opportunity but remember, we don’t want any witnesses.’

  Sandy slid reluctantly out of his seat and on to the road. He cowered by the door for a few seconds and zipped the leather jacket all the way up to his neck. The rain licked at his face.

  ‘Don’t do anything without my say-so,’ Billy said. ‘Just don’t lose him. Phone me on the mobile when we can take him.’

  Sandy plunged his hands deep into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘All right for you, you bastard,’ he muttered. ‘How come you get to stay nice and warm? Thanks for the chance to freeze my balls off.’

  ‘That’s what brothers are for.’

  Sandy walked round to the pavement. In the distance Adamson was turning a corner. Sandy stopped grumbling and broke into a shambling trot to catch up.

  18

  Fyfe drove north from Edinburgh. The city was shrouded in a grey afternoon fog. Buildings bobbed about in it like flotsam drifting in the sea. A cold sun shone above it like an under-powered light bulb in a smoke-filled room. A drizzle of rain fell steadily. He paid the toll at the barrier of the Forth Bridge and quickly wound up the window to keep out the slimy wet air. He passed under the giant suspension towers that disappeared into the amorphous greyness above. Over the bridge and on to the Perth motorway and the susurrus of overtaking cars became a hypnotic sound.

  He had to drive slowly. The car, like his thoughts, was cocooned in a little bubble of clarity surrounded by the fog. The dampness of the air translated itself into individual droplets that trembled on the bonnet and queued up at the edge of the windscreen like beads on an abacus. He ran the heating at full blast. The radio played loud music.

  He thought about corrupt priests in long robes and Sylvia, the avaricious advocate, parading before him shamelessly in nothing but her wig and gown. He thought of how Lord Greenmantle’s scrawny neck rubbed against his stiff collar and how he had once held Fyfe back in the witness box after cross-examination in a trial.

  ‘You are absolutely sure, are you, Sergeant Fyfe?’ he had asked, writing furiously.

  ‘Yes, my Lord.’

  ‘Absolutely sure?’

  The repetition of the question implied doubt. Fyfe’s hesitation enhanced the implication. Everyone in the courtroom was looking at him. None of them had pity in their eyes.

  ‘Absolutely sure, my Lord,’ he said louder than necessary.

  He could remember only the exchange with Greenmantle, not the details of the trial or even what it was he had been so absolutely sure about. It was a small incident contained inside its own little bubble of clarity and it had prejudiced him against Greenmantle for ever. His engagement to Sylvia prejudiced him even more.

  ‘Absolutely sure, my Lord,’ he said, grinning foolishly at the reflection of his eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘Absolutely sure that I have slept with your future wife. No question. Absolutely sure.’

  He thought about Mrs McMorrow’s simple view of life which avoided all personal responsibility, and he imagined the three near-decapitated bodies now lying on mortuary slabs in the city behind him. Whose fault was that? The Devil did indeed work in mysterious ways.

  The car suddenly popped like a cork from the fog into bright sunshine. Fyfe shaded his eyes, lowered the sun visor and pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor.

  19

  Adamson walked erect, ignoring the rain. The high buildings on either side seemed to lean inwards threateningly towards him but he refused to be intimidated. He passed the roller shutters of the tattoo shop, and the Barnardo’s, and the 99p Wonderland, and the kebab takeaway, and the patterned wrought-iron work on the head-high windows of the Ranch Bar. Every second shop was boarded up and plastered with torn and fading posters. A new poster outside a newsagent’s announced a Double Murder Riddle.

  It was all so familiar, barely changed at all. Even the litter in the gutters, trapped around the wheels of the unbroken line of cars, looked the same as it had nine years before when he and Mike came charging along after being spotted. The sirens had been squealing after them as they knocked pedestrians out of the way in what he had assumed was to be their last desperate attempt to escape capture. They were running into a hopeless dead end. He had not known then just how desperate Mike was. Mike had decided to escape whatever happened. He had his own personal escape route.

  The first-floor flat had belonged to a friend. There was nowhere else to go. Luckily for the friend he wasn’t there. They had battered the door in and then barricaded it and Mike had started blasting out the window. Five hours it lasted. They had seen themselves on the television. Then it was all over. Mike used the last cartridge on himself. His blood was everywhere. So were the police.

  The flat was above the same fruit and vegetable shop. There was a light on in the room behind closed curtains. A Chicago Bears American football sticker was on one corner of the window. Adamson stood staring up at it, feeling warm air blow in his face from the pub vents, hearing the hum of voices from the interior. He stood there for five minutes, feeling a satisfying sense of achievement. Nine years, he told himself, and the bastards still can’t be sure what happened to the money. The secret is mine, all mine, and no one else is going to get their hands on it.

  It had been with a sense of relief that Adamson had seen the detective David Fyfe at the church house when Father Byrne had gone back to get him some spending money. It had given him an excuse to call off the supposed recovery of the cash. He had been stringing Byrne along without a clear idea of what he was going to do when it came to the crunch. He would look such a fool if he produced nothing to hand over. Byrne would laugh at him. Adamson couldn’t permit that. He wouldn’t let himself be made out to be a fool.

  Fyfe had acted the good guy policeman for a while after his arrest, guiding him into the back seat of the patrol car with a blanket over his head, checking that the handcuffs were not too tight, supplying tea and cigarettes and sympathy. But he quickly lost patience with the softly-softly approach and started his painful thumb-gouging trick. Then he seemed to lose the place altogether and kicked the legs from under the chair so that Adamson banged the back of his head on the floor when he fell.

  That shut his mouth tight. If he had been left another five minutes he might have told the whole story, given it all away. He had been close to breaking point but Fyfe had spoiled it.

  Nine years ago, that had been. He had got back into the chair and looked over at Fyfe and could see that he appreciated exactly what had happened. Funny how Fyfe should appear now, allowing him to get away from the clutches of Father Byrne, at least temporarily while he sorted himself out. A coincidence, Byrne had said. A happy coincidence. Even if Fyfe was looking for him to check up on the money, it would do him no good. But it was nice to feel wanted.

  Adamson abruptly turned away from his position in the street below the window of the flat. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by loitering too obviously. He began retracing his steps, visualising himself and Mike Barrie running wildly. He reached the corner and looked along the next street where most of the tenements had been pul
led down and replaced by more modern, terraced and detached housing. They had run along here too. Then it had been a construction site for most of its length, dotted with heaps of sand and piles of bricks and an estate of half-built houses. There had been a chain link fence and notices warning of guard dogs. And it had been a Sunday and no one was working. They had counted the money inside a house with plastic sheeting for windows and sawdust all over the bare floorboards.

  Adamson walked slowly, looking at the houses with their orange roof tiles and plumes of pampas grass on tiny patches of front garden. He superimposed his memory of the building site on the actuality in front of him and the two images merged. But he could not decide where the house had been. Presumably it had been rebuilt after the fire, the ashes swept away and the gap filled. He had tried but he could not remember exactly.

  He stopped. This was where it had all gone wrong. It was here they had been seen by a policeman on the beat, standing in the street talking like two long-lost friends. Stupid with hindsight for them both to have gone to collect the car. Stupid to hang around trying to look casual. But then it had been stupid for Adamson to go along with Mike’s plan to booby trap the money, to stack it so carefully and place the candle in its dish of petrol. ‘No bastard but us is sharing this,’ he had said. ‘If we can’t have it, no one else is.’ And Adamson didn’t have the guts to argue. Stupid. So stupid.

  The policeman had shouted. They had run. Mike had died. He had survived. The booby trap had been sprung. Nine years later he had returned, having kept the faith. A long time. A very long time.

  Adamson started walking again. He didn’t look back. He would find a pub. Drink a couple of pints. Give himself time to think. But he had already made up his mind what he had to do. He wasn’t going to act stupid this time. No one was going to make a fool of him.

  20

  Fyfe slowed his car and drew to a halt in a passing place. He got out to look, shading his eyes against the glare of the cold, rain-shot sunlight. Fields and bare moorland and stunted forests dipped and curved all around him in a vast bowl of undulating land. A thin V-shaped wedge had been broken off one side of the bowl and was filled by the sea. He had asked for directions in the village several miles back and been sent on to the narrow road with crumbling edges that took him, all of a sudden, into a desolate environment he could hardly have guessed was within a few minutes’ drive of ordinary civilisation. He had listened to an excitable radio reporter rant on about drug wars in Edinburgh with three murders in one night. A climate of terror had gripped the city, she said breathlessly. Fyfe’s pager remained silent.

  The road ran away from where he stood, unexpectedly straight, like a crack across the surface of brown heather and green grass, between the shining flecks of exposed rock. Sheep were sparsely irregular white specks on the hillsides. Herds of deer were up there too probably, camouflaged and invisible to his city-trained eye, but he knew they were there because he had seen them. The approach of his car had disturbed them as they foraged near the roadside and they had turned and galloped off, merging completely with the landscape within a few hundred yards.

  The directions were quite specific. Drive five miles up the single track that branches off the metalled road and find a rough track on the left just beyond the second cattle grid. Drive slowly over it or it will rip off your exhaust, and you will find the monks’ retreat on the coast about a mile further on. Don’t worry if you can’t see the building and think you are heading into the middle of nowhere. It is only visible for the last few hundred yards. Have faith and you will find us, the jovial Brother Patrick had assured him. We don’t get many visitors.

  Looking down, Fyfe could see where tyre tracks had flattened the verge and led on to a track that was barely distinguishable from the general spread of grass and scattered boulders. The faint impression of the track pointed towards the sea, indicating the correct direction. It had to be the right place. Have faith, Fyfe thought. Rely on your Boy Scout training.

  He sucked in a long breath of fresh air and enjoyed the stimulating coldness of it inflating his lungs. Then he got back into his car. It bumped off the smooth road on to the rock-strewn track. Soon it became obvious that he would not be able to change out of second gear or build up any speed. The car lurched and dropped as if it was a ship negotiating the peaks and troughs of a slow motion stormy sea. Fyfe had to use all his concentration to avoid the worst of the obstacles, terrified that he would scrape the sump and be left stranded with nothing but wilderness and peat bog surrounding him. It would be a very long hike back.

  It took him thirty minutes to cover two miles and there was still nothing to be seen. He began to curse savagely out loud, convinced he had taken the wrong route, trying to work out how he could turn round, when he topped a crest and saw the retreat directly ahead of him. It was a large, many-windowed house with a pepper-pot turret on one corner of the steeply pitched roof and a square tower on the other, each sprouting unused flag-poles. Between them was a row of half a dozen gargoyles. A hooded monk was standing motionless on the steps beside the ten-foot-high front door that was flanked by a pair of recumbent stone lions. The monk wore a traditional off-white habit with a plaited cord tied round his waist. He held his hands crossed into opposite sleeves.

  The scene was, at first glance, a disconcerting throwback to medieval times. Fyfe’s initial impression was to imagine himself caught in a time warp. He must have passed through a portal, so beloved of science fiction writers, somewhere in the remote countryside and unknowingly travelled back to a different age. But as the novelty of the thought wiped the frown from his face and turned it into an amused smile, he was noticing give-away evidence of truly modern influences. There was glass in the windows, and an electric fence surrounding vegetable gardens that occupied a site about fifty yards to one side. Another monk in hood and habit was bent over the engine of a bright red miniature tractor. At its rear a shiny rotavator dripped black earth. Three black and white dairy cows, with heavy swollen udders, had yellow plastic tags in their ears. A tall aerial projected from the roof of the house, seeming to spring from the head of the most hideous gargoyle, rising like a jet of water and just starting to fall back on itself where it ended. The monk by the door stepped forward as Fyfe parked the car close to the steps. Ankle-high Reebok trainers appeared below the hem of the monk’s robe.

  ‘It’s my corns, before you ask,’ the monk said, pushing back the hood to reveal a round, almost bald head with grey eyes and the squashed features of a former boxer. He held out one leg in front of him like a dancer performing. ‘These soft protective shoes are a luxury I regret and also covet. I am a poor Christian, a poorer monk. I am more concerned about the state of my temporal feet than the state of my immortal soul. How can I presume to be a proper example for mankind?’

  ‘Brother Patrick?’ Fyfe said.

  ‘The same.’

  They shook hands and the monk touched Fyfe’s shoulders like a tailor finishing the fitting for a new suit.

  ‘Nice place you have here,’ Fyfe said.

  ‘A folly, like all human life,’ Brother Patrick explained with an all-encompassing wave of his arm. ‘It was built more than a hundred years ago by an English factory owner who wanted to live in seclusion, ministered to by the comforts of his wealth rather than the company of his fellow man. When he died, alone and friendless, he bequeathed it to our order as a kind of atonement for his exploitation of people during his life. Probably believed it would buy him a place in heaven.’

  ‘And did it?’

  ‘If only it was as easy as that, Chief Inspector Fyfe. If only.’

  Brother Patrick smiled sadly and turned to lead the way inside. He limped despite the Reeboks that padded silently over the bare wooden floorboards, and he talked like a tour guide on automatic pilot. They were a community of eight monks, providing retreats for those seeking spiritual guidance in their lives. They had an arrangement with the neighbouring estate owner to use his Range Rover to get people and suppli
es in and out. There was a phone to contact the outside world, a radio to keep up with the news, and a bedroom converted into a chapel for devotions. The rest, he said solemnly, is silence.

  Fyfe looked out the window of the drawing-room. The house was constructed so that its walls rose directly from a sheer cliff face. Below was a small natural harbour and quayside, rusty iron rings still embedded in the rock above a fringe of clinging green seaweed. A path of irregular carved steps followed the contours upwards.

  ‘On stormy days with an easterly wind the sea spray hammers against this window,’ Brother Patrick said. ‘Sometimes you expect the waves to come crashing right through. We were bequeathed the furniture as well.’

  He flapped an arm at the antique sideboards and bookcases and the huge bow-legged table in the middle of the room. Gilt-framed portraits of anonymous people lined the walls. There was the impression of disuse and dust, cobwebs in dark corners, and a faintly unpleasant smell. Fyfe thought that if he listened hard enough he should be able to hear woodworm boring into the ancient wood.

  ‘It is serviceable,’ Brother Patrick said. ‘At least the toilets are state of the art. The last thing we had repaired. Now, if you will wait here I will tell Father Quinn you have arrived.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything about Father Quinn before I meet him?’ Fyfe said hurriedly. ‘Has he said anything to you?’

  ‘No,’ Brother Patrick said blankly.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you must be aware of the circumstances.’

  ‘All I know is that Father Quinn is considered a suicide risk. We watch him carefully.’

  ‘Is he? I didn’t realise.’

  ‘Suicide is a mortal sin. We try to dissuade him. We try to remind him that God has purpose for every life.’

  ‘Is suicide a worse sin than the one that brought him here?’

  A sad smile twitched over Brother Patrick’s face. ‘I keep a small stone on my bedside table, Chief Inspector.’